A Game Boy Demake of Game Freak’s 2022 Pokémon Scarlet has appeared online, with players able to download the ROM files now. The Pokémon Scarlet Game Boy Demake is the brainchild of homebrew developer 2bitcrook under the appropriately named ‘Game Boy Demakes‘ brand and was created using GB Studio. While not a complete port of the original Nintendo Switch title, the demake does provide inquisitive players with a small section of the game to explore.
The creator confirmed on Twitter that the Pokémon Scarlet Game Boy demake is “playable from certain angles” although not fully playable. They continued by revealing the scope of the project as “just a bit of fun” that allows players to walk around and talk to NPCs, “check the Pokédex and faux battle”.
Game Boy Demakes have now shared the files for the Pokémon Scarlet Game Boy Demake online for free on their Patreon page. There are two versions available with separate files for use with Game Boy emulators and Analogue Pocket. Game Boy Demakes provided a caveat for the Analogue Pocket files however, stating the software is “untested due to not owning one” although the developer thought it “would be nice to throw in for anyone who has one”.
A final caveat for anyone downloading these files reads “expect bugs, a bunch of bugs, but hey, that’s gamedev baybeeeeeee”.
In addition to producing the code for the demake, 2bitcrook and Handheld Gameplayer have produced mock Game Boy carts and cardboard box that wouldn’t look out of place among anyone’s collection of Game Boy games.
Demake Me Come Back There
A ‘demake’, unlike the antithetical ‘remake’, often reimagines current or modern titles as if they had released during an earlier era, and often, on substantially less powerful hardware.
Other popular demakes have seen 2015’s PlayStation 4 exclusive Bloodborne presented with all the 32-bit charm of the original PlayStation in Bloodborne PSX and Resident Evil 4 transposed as a SNES side-scrolling shooter called Bio Evil 4.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet originally launched for the Nintendo Switch on the 18th of November 2022 and received mixed reviews, with critics taking aim at the game’s poor performance and outdated graphics while praising the lack of a linear pathway through the game as one of its strongest features.
